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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28205064">I Know You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative'>Canon_Is_Relative</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Episode Fix-it, Episode: s04e17 It's a Terrible Life, First Time, M/M, Missing Scene, Smith &amp; Wesson, accidental sibling incest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:01:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,498</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28205064</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're not just some corporate douchebag. This isn't you. I know you."</p><p>"Know me? You don't know me, pal. You should go."</p><p>Sam goes. But an hour later, he comes back.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Smith/Sam Wesson, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>187</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Supernatural Spring Fling 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Know You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassiopeia7/gifts">cassiopeia7</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dean’s building has an actual doorman. The first time he came here, Sam had huffed to himself, barely suppressing a snarky comment. It creeps him out to think of living somewhere where someone always knows if you’re home or not.</p><p>The doorman doesn’t look like he’s used to people sitting on the low wall outside his station with a six-pack and bag of take-out food. Sam tries to sit still and look as though it isn’t making him twitchy as hell, for some reason he can’t put a label on, to be sitting here illuminated by the too-bright flood of a security light.</p><p>Dean approaches, caution wrapped around him like a suit of armor, flashing Sam back to those first encounters in the elevator. It makes him dizzy to think that the first time he’d ever seen Dean outside of his dreams was only a week ago.</p><p>Dean nods at the doorman but makes no move to escape into the steel and glass sanctuary of his monstrous high-rise apartment building. He lifts his chin, holding his gaze too firmly to be casual and giving Sam a front-row view to the way a flush rises in his cheeks.</p><p>“What are you doing here?”</p><p>Sam finally stands, slowly, gesturing to his peace offering. “Brought you some dinner.”</p><p>“Let me guess.” Dean says, and though Sam has no right to think it he still feels the gruffness in his voice makes him sound more like himself than Sam has ever heard him before. “Greasy diner food drenched in saturated fat?”</p><p>Sam holds up his hands. “No, man, I didn’t come here to — we don’t have to talk about it, all right? I’m not here to, to beg or anything, I swear. But dude...” Sam glances away, reassuring himself that there’s still a closed door between them and the doorman, but he still drops his voice. “You just killed a ghost with nothing but cayenne pepper and maple syrup in your system. You’ve got to eat something.”</p><p>Dean snorts softly and Sam lets his lips quirk up but doesn’t dare risk something as all-in as a grin as he stands there quietly, trying to look as non-threatening as he knows how.</p><p>At last Dean shakes his head, resettling the strap of his messenger bag on his shoulder. “Yeah, all right. Your concern for my blood sugar is touching. Come on.”</p><p> </p><p>Sam sets out the food while Dean ducks into his bedroom without a word. Black bean and tofu burritos. Sam had asked for all the fixings, only the sour cream and cheese on the side. He tries to keep himself focused on his task, wishing Dean would hurry up and come back out, relieve him of the discomfort of being alone in this place that’s somehow both more and less familiar than it ought to be. Just like everything about Dean.</p><p>When there’s finally nothing else he can conceivably do Sam opens a beer, sits down on a barstool, and lets himself think about what he’s avoided thinking about since he left Dean in his office an hour ago.</p><p><em>All I know is, I got this feeling in my gut. And I know — I know that deep down, you gotta be feeling it too. We’re supposed to be something else. You’re not just some corporate douchebag. This isn’t you. I</em> know <em>you.</em></p><p>
  <em>Know me? You don’t know me, pal. You should go.</em>
</p><p>The rejection on Dean’s face had cut him to the core, and so he’d gone without another word. Once he was out of Dean’s presence, though, he’d felt the loss more deeply, more painfully, than he had Ian’s literal death. Ian — the guy he’d spent eight hours a day with for the past three weeks, his friend, his <em>only</em> friend — had started to feel like just another ghost. Real enough, but incorporeal. As soon as Sam spoke to Dean for the first time, as soon as the stranger-who-was-never-a-stranger from his dreams took his place in the real world with Sam, everything else had started fading into the background.</p><p>“You know,” Sam had told Dean the night before. “Ian and I were friends. The guy who pencilled his neck.”</p><p>Dean had been leaning over his shoulder, gaze on the laptop screen, and Sam looked up in time to see his eyes go wide.</p><p>“Yeah.” Sam had nodded. “He was the first person to talk to me when I got hired, kind of showed me the ropes, you know? We hung out after work, too.”</p><p>“Sam, I’m sorry. I mean, I figured you knew him, but I didn’t realize.”</p><p>“Yeah, it sucks, and I feel bad...but I don’t actually really feel it, you know?”</p><p>Dean had nodded sagely. “You're probably still in shock about it. That's why you’re all gung-ho about all of this, you know? Taking it all in stride. ‘Hey, ghosts are real, we’re gonna hunt this one down and kill it!’”</p><p>Sam frowned, considering. “Yeah, I guess.” He’d thought about adding, ‘If that explains me, what explains you?’ But he just looked up and met Dean’s eyes, found he couldn’t look away even as he confessed, “Just kind of makes me feel shitty. I spent every day with the guy, but I don’t... I don’t miss him. I don’t even feel like I know him. Knew him.”</p><p>“Well it’s not like you were soulmates or anything, right?” Dean had asked. The words seemed to surprise him as much as they did Sam and both their eyes jumped back down to the laptop. Dean had cleared his throat. “Everyone deals with this stuff differently. We’ll get that ghost, you’ll get some closure, you’ll see.”</p><p>Sam had searched out the reflection of Dean’s face in the laptop’s darkened screen, then snorted. “Thanks, Doctor Phil.”</p><p>Dean’s grin illuminated his face, radiating relief that they were out of the deep waters they’d inadvertently waded into. He’d clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder and let it linger there long enough to give him a surprisingly gentle squeeze.</p><p>A minute later Sam was raiding Dean’s kitchen for salt while Dean picked up the real poker from beside the fake fireplace, everything easy between them until Sam’s, <em>I know you,</em> had shattered Dean’s fragile protective shell.</p><p>“Burritos?” Dean says over his shoulder now, making Sam jump. “Bold choice.”</p><p>Sam lets out a breath, turning to watch Dean poke at the little buffet he’d laid out and, to Sam’s surprise, opening up his burrito to plop sour cream in the middle.</p><p>Dean had changed into track pants and a gray hoodie. The combination of slick athletic fabric and soft fleece makes Sam’s stomach flip, palms itching with phantom sensation as he imagines, suddenly, how it would be to touch. He knows Dean. He <em>knows</em> him. But <em>this</em> is a mystery — this desire that seems to extend back in time, further than makes any kind of sense. Not that any of this makes any sense. He’s been telling himself for days that the dreams are just his subconscious trying to make sense of what’s going on around him but now, now...</p><p>Now Dean’s wearing an oversized gray hoodie that Sam thinks is the sexiest thing he’s ever seen, so maybe his dream world is the only place that anything makes sense after all.</p><p>“Something on my face?” Dean asks, swiping self-consciously at his chin. Sam shakes his head and follows his first instinct, gets to his feet and goes over to stand beside Dean.</p><p>He looks down at his hands, swallowing quickly. “We don’t have to talk about it. I promise, this is all I’m gonna say, I just want you to know...back there, I didn’t mean to freak you out. And I definitely didn’t mean to push you away.” <em>Or make you push me away,</em> he adds silently, finally meeting Dean’s eyes.</p><p>There’s a skittishness to Dean’s whole bearing. The moment feels so fragile, and Sam doesn’t know if he has what it takes to caress everything back into place between them.</p><p>He’s just drawn a slow breath, hoping inspiration will come with it, when Dean half-turns, setting down his beer and his burrito. There’s a smear of guacamole on his thumb and Sam watches as he licks it off. It’s utterly unselfconscious, Dean seemingly lost in thought, but it makes the air in Sam’s lungs seem to evaporate all at once, while the aching want he’s been steadily suppressing for days — weeks, longer, somehow — twists in his belly. It’s a sight his whole being knows. <em>How,</em> when this is the first time he’s ever seen Dean eat? It’s human, it’s <em>Dean;</em> it’s vulnerability and comfort in Sam’s presence that Sam doesn’t feel he deserves, but craves with an intensity he’s never felt for anything in his life.</p><p>His hands are trembling and his beer bottle clacks too-loud against the countertop as he sets it down. The noise makes Dean start and look up before Sam can pull the curtains on whatever he’s feeling. He knows he’s wide open, if only for the way Dean’s gaze darts over his face before fixing on his eyes.</p><p>Then Dean lifts a hand. His fingers are curled in to his palm like he hasn’t yet decided what he’s doing, but in the space of a breath his knuckles brush against Sam’s jaw.</p><p>It’s gentle, as gentle as Sam can remember being touched in his life but the touch itself feels like a static shock, something erupting between them, a flood of <em>wrong bad we can’t</em> so strong and so unexpected that Sam recoils, stutters back a step.</p><p>Dean’s hand hovers in midair for a moment before he snatches it back. Sam’s chest is heaving. It felt like a knee-jerk, like kicking in that door or throwing the poker to Dean – something honed into survival instinct by force of long repetition. Trying to slow his racing heart, trying to reclaim the desire that had been coursing through him mere moments earlier, Sam grasps around for understanding. He says to himself, <em>Internalized homophobia,</em> scowling inwardly at the fucked up state of the world that would make it his first instinct to shy <em>away</em> from a caress.</p><p>“Sorry,” Sam whispers. Dean looks like he’s about to bolt so Sam stirs himself, recovers his lost ground, and reaches for him. A hand on his chest, palm sliding, fingers twisting. “Sorry, Dean, I’m sorry, I just — I didn’t know, I didn’t think you wanted...”</p><p>“Oh,” Dean says, voice so low Sam feels it in his bones as Dean edges closer. “I want you.”</p><p>With his blown pupils, flushed cheeks, impossible lips, Dean makes Sam’s head swim. He’s got his other hand twisted in Dean’s shirt even before Dean goes on, “Since I saw you in that damn elevator, man.”</p><p><em>Longer than that,</em> Sam wants to say. <em>I’ve wanted you way longer than that</em>, but even with Dean-right-here-right-now taking up almost every corner of his brain, he’s still got a spare synapse or two to keep him in check, whisper to him that he scared Dean away once already tonight, he doesn’t want to do it again.</p><p>Luckily, a moment later, all impulse to speak is banished by a torrential outpouring of desire as Dean pulls him close and Sam finally, <em>finally</em> gets his mouth on him.</p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Sam is being escorted to the door by two security guards when the sight of Dean, coming towards him with another upper-management type Sam vaguely recognizes, stops him mid-step. The two guards jostle him, but Sam can’t take his eyes off of Dean.</p><p>It’s his fault they’d parted as they did, early that morning. Completely spent, Sam’s body lax and molded to Dean’s as though they’d been lying around in bed together all their lives, Sam had started laughing softly and Dean, smiling, poked him in the ribs. ‘What? C’mon, what?’ In the low light, his freckles had stood out, lines around his glittering eyes growing deeper as his smile grew broader. <em>He looks so relaxed</em>, Sam had thought, thumb tracing over his collarbone. He'd looked so <em>happy.</em> And that was what let the stupid words come tumbling out of Sam's mouth.</p><p>‘I bet living out of crappy motel rooms doesn’t sound so bad now, if you know you get to come home to this.’</p><p>Dean didn’t kick him out of bed or anything, but that had been it for the night. They hadn’t spoken any more and Sam had slept fitfully on the other side of the bed, glancing over whenever he woke at the unyielding line of Dean’s back and shoulders. He finally got up when he saw dawn struggling to clear the tops of the lower buildings surrounding Dean’s apartment. He had to go home and get a clean polo for work; beyond that he was thoroughly sick of trying to puzzle out how it was that the two of them could slot together like long-lost puzzle pieces one moment, and break apart so easily the next. What was it in Dean that so thoroughly rejected the idea that they could both have this, and hunt ghosts?</p><p>Dean’s jaw clenches as soon as he sees Sam now, and his body language as he stalks towards him is more closed-off that Sam’s ever seen. He’s not wearing a tie and Sam notices for the first time that he’s slightly bow-legged, emphasized by the way he’s stomping across the lobby like the marble floor has done him a personal injury. The older man keeping pace with him — Mr. Adler, right, he’d been on the team that hired Sam — has the kind of smug, self-satisfied look that makes Sam want nothing so much as to slug him across the jaw. He curls his hands into fists and tries to rein it in, seeing as they’re probably here to ensure he gets off company property without taking a poker to anything else and he really doesn’t want to have the cops called on him on too.</p><p>But when Dean stops in front of him, he just stares hard into Sam’s face, then turns to Adler and makes an impatient ‘Hurry up’ kind of gesture. “Meet me outside, Sam,” he says, gruff and pissed-off. “Gotta go find my damn car and make sure these <em>assclowns</em>,” he shoots the word over his shoulder with a glare, “didn’t do anything to fuck her up.”</p><p>When Sam turns back to Adler, baffled, it’s to find that he has somehow managed to slide right up into his personal space. He can smell his old-man breath as the guy raises two fingers and pokes his forehead.</p><p>“What the—” Sam recoils, then goes cold.</p><p>“Welcome home, Sammy.” Whatever else he may be - angel, trickster, witch - Adler is sleaze personified, but Sam doesn’t even look at him. Instead, he turns in fascinated horror to watch his brother reach for the door. Dean's neck and cheeks are as red as they had been the night before while Sam bit hungrily at his mouth, fumbling for his belt.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This ends so abruptly because of Spring Fling's word count limit, sorry! :D But Stardust Made (who also beta-read this piece, thanks love!) and I have a sequel plotted out and partially written. Subscribe if you want to see it, we'll get it out sooner or later!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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